OFF: Amazon Deal

[Jon Jarrett]

On Mon, 29 Nov 2004, Carl Edlund Anderson wrote:

> On 29-Nov-2004 09:21, Jon Jarrett wrote:
>
> I tend to use abebooks as my first stop for genuinely out-of-print
> books, or books published further outside the English-speaking world
> (though I've occasionally hit up Amazon.fr or Amazon.de).  Abebooks have
> a .com and a .co.uk site, and the UK site optionally lets me list
> results with UK sellers first if I _really_ want it fast (though the
> weak dollar means even with shipping things from outside the UK are
> usually cheaper, if I can wait a couple of weeks -- which I generally can).

        ABE are pretty good, and also quite responsible about banning
sellers who don't actually send stuff and pressing for compensation on
your behalf and so on. It's run by a pair of conscientious Canadians whom
we always found pleasant to deal with. If you're looking for serious
obscura, however, I recommend <http://www.bookfinder.com>, for two
reasons; firstly, they have a more European basis than ABE, so you can
often find equally cheap shipping on stuff from e. g. Germany or the
Netherlands; and secondly, ABE list through them, so you're actually just
broadening your search rather than looking somewhere different. The
downsides are that the operation is more anonymous and less accountable,
they don't deal direct with their sellers so won't go to town on them for
you if the sellers fail to deliver and so on, and that given that it lists
ABE and several other resellers, for anything other than complete obscura,
the rather less subtle search engine it uses will drown you in hits. ABE
tell you more about the books and provide a better service, but Bookfinder
will find stuff they can't.

        If you're after German stuff, meanwhile, you should cut out the
middleman and go direct to <http://www.zvab.de>, and similarly with
Spanish stuff <http://www.iberlibro.com>, neither of whom seem to list
through other sites but do have stuff you won't find elsewhere.

        Disclaimer: I learnt all this by working for people who list
through these sites, so I could be said to have a bias if I were still
working for them. See if you recognise the prose style on any of the book
descriptions :-) Yours,
                        Jon

ObCD: Man or Astroman? - _Made From Technetium_ ("it's radioactive, so
watch your fingers!")
--
                Jonathan Jarrett, Birkbeck College, London
    jjarrett at chiark.greenend.org.uk/ejarr01 at students.bbk.ac.uk
  "As much as the vision of the blind man improves with the rising sun,
       So too does the intelligence of the fool after good advice."
       (Bishop Theodulf of Orleans, late-eight/early-ninth century)